Puducherry Congress reiterates stand to lead alliance in the Union Territory

The Puducherry Pradesh Congress Committee has reiterated its basal to the All India Congress Committee that the party, nether nary circumstances, should concede the relation of starring the confederation of “secular and democratic” parties for the upcoming Assembly elections successful the Union Territory.

The party’s Puducherry leadership, during their caller interactions with AICC wide caput (organisation) K. C. Venugopal and president of campaigner screening committee T. S. Singh Deo, connected 2 antithetic occasions, had expressed their tendency to contention not little than 18 of the full 30 Assembly seats dispersed crossed the 4 regions of the Union Territory.

The elder leaders, successful their deliberations with Mr. Venugopal astatine a backstage edifice connected Tuesday, had taken a presumption that the enactment needed to contention a minimum of 18 seats for the Congress to wrest powerfulness from the AINRC-BJP combine.

The leaders maintained that the enactment had parted with immoderate of the “winnable and stronghold areas” to DMK successful the 2021 Assembly polls and those constituencies needed to beryllium taken backmost from the Dravidian enactment successful the upcoming polls.

“We are determined to negociate connected each seats different than the 8 sitting seats. We are besides determined to pb the confederation arsenic the 2024 Lok Sabha canvass results showed the party’s spot successful Puducherry,” said a Congress functionary aft Tuesday’s gathering with Mr. Venugopal.

In fact, during the sojourn of Mr. Deo past week for holding preliminary treatment for campaigner selection, a radical of workers submitted a practice to him requesting the AICC to instrumentality to a look of retaining 20 seats for the Congress and leaving the remainder to the allies.

“Our workers are of the content that the Congress should contention 20 seats and permission the remaining 10 to the confederation partners. Contesting little seats volition not assistance the enactment to signifier the adjacent government. In the past election, we gave distant astatine slightest 9 of our constituencies to the DMK. It was a incorrect determination to portion with those seats,” the practice said.

The practice besides said that the AICC should depute a abstracted perceiver for confederation talks successful Puducherry. The talks should beryllium held astatine the PCC bureau only, it added.